Illustrating once again how police are now little more than revenue generators for a state which vampirically feeds on the public, cops in Knoxville, Tennessee are swapping patrol cars for big rigs in a bid to catch texters.

The swap is “part of a sting to catch people texting and driving,” and gives the Highway Patrol police an advantage in spotting “violators” because the semi-trucks sit much higher.

According to the report, dozens of drivers were ticketed during day one of the sweep in Knoxville.

The notion of being tailed by a cop in a massive truck is obviously also a powerful intimidation tactic.

A MyFox DC anchor questioned the policy, remarking, “That doesn’t seem like that’s right, it seems that would cost a lot more….you can’t get anything higher than that, like an SUV wouldn’t work, you’ve got to get a big rig?” However, his co-anchor thought the idea was “clever”.

This is yet another example of how the state is directing police to act as revenue generators rather than having them stop actual crimes.

Police response times are getting slower every year, but instead of concentrating on “protect and serve,” cops are increasingly being deployed by state and local governments simply to shake down the public for money.

America’s freeways are no longer a shining example of a ‘free’ country, and instead have been turned into revenue generating control grids watched over by big brother surveillance cameras, license plate scanners and aggressive roid-rage cops who hunt down drivers for minor infractions.

The cost of traffic tickets is also soaring as governments vampirically suck off the public in a desperate bid to replenish their bankrupt coffers. Speeding tickets raise some $6 billion dollars in the U.S. every single year.

As Michael Snyder comments, “Back in the old days, the highways of America were great examples to the rest of the world of the tremendous liberties and freedoms that we enjoyed. Americans loved to hop into their vehicles and take a drive. But now government is sucking all of the fun out of driving. The control freak bureaucrats that dominate our political system have figured out that giant piles of money can be raised by turning our roads into revenue raising tools.”